Analyzing the Determinants of Locational Advantages in the Tehran Metropolitan Regions: Empirical Evidences of the Four Industrial Sectors

Since the last decade, many studies have been conducted that investigated the attribute, the advent and development of technology- oriented industries to the presence of some characteristics and locational advantages in metropolitan regions. According to these studies, the most important determinant factors of the locational advantages of these regions are: market access and proximity to customers and suppliers, access to the row materials, proximity to universities, infrastructure endowments and trade service, proximity to local labor market, proximity to other similar firms and etc. that can decrease the risk and uncertainties and increase learning capacities and innovation. Therefore, the emergence of an industrial sector in a metropolitan region can be the result of certain locational advantages that region offers to the industry or any sector of interest. The main objective of this article is to analyze the importance of locational factors which have led to spatial concentration of the industrial firms in Tehran's metropolitan region. The method of research was survey method. For selecting the firms in the sample, the necessary information was obtained from different sources in the region. Stratified random sampling was used to select the firms that constituted the industrial sectors. They were stratified not by size, but by the type of activities, in order to ensure that all major activities in the four industrial clusters were covered. The results of this article revealed that the sample industrial sectors are affected by the various locational advantages in the region. These sectors were benefited by locating in the Tehran Metropolitan region. It is interesting that capital and state incentives had the less importance in locating firms in the region and these factors are not considered to be as locational advantages. Besides, Research findings indicated that the vast majority of the firms have similar locational advantages as there are some differences between the size of the firms and their locational advantage. At the end, some suggestions are presented for further studies in order to better understanding of the locational advantages in the region.